Leftovers by any other name (part 4) ... Put an egg on it

hash trio with poached eggs

At Thanksgiving, my friend Kelly said she has a put an egg on it rule for her leftovers: If you can put an egg on it and make a meal out of it, it is a good leftover. And in this season, we really do need new ideas for leftovers!

Last night, in an effort to clean out the remainder of our Thanksgiving leftovers, but not eat the same meal again, I made three kinds of hash with poached eggs. Hash is basically cooked meat and/or vegetables cut into small pieces and cooked again, usually with potatoes. I love onions in my hash, some people also like bell peppers in their hash too. We had ham and sweet potato hash, potato duo hash, and garden vegetable hash. They were delicious, and it was a joy to eat a new meal.

Ham and sweet potato hash ingredients

Butter

Onion

Leftover sweet potatoes

Leftover ham

Seasonings

Potato duo hash ingredients

Butter

Onion

Leftover sweet potatoes

Leftover mashed potatoes

Seasonings

Garden vegetable hash ingredients

Butter

Onion

Leftover eggplant

Leftover zucchini

Leftover summer squash

Leftover beets

Seasonings

How to make your hash

Melt butter in a skillet. Add finely chopped onion and saute until soft. Add chopped meats and vegetables. Saute until hash starts to brown and crisp. Serve topped with an egg -- poached, fried, or soft-boiled work best.

What leftovers do you have in your refrigerator? Hash is versatile, make up your own!

Leftovers by any other name ...

It’s a week to Thankgsiving. Don’t panic! You still have time to get your feast in order. Follow my Countdown to Thanksgiving timeline, to a flawless day. 

In the meantime, it’s a perfect time to make room in your fridge, freezer, and pantry for all the special ingredients you need for your Thanksgiving meal, and the holiday baking that is sure to follow.

 +  = 

I made pork and pumpkin enchiladas with leftover Apple Pork Roast from family dinner, leftover pumpkin purée from Pumpkin-Hazelnut-White Chocolate Biscotti, roasted garlic from Garlic Oil I made as gifts for clients, and lettuce, cheddar, and flour tortillas from the taco shindig my son had when his friends were home from college for the weekend. 

Enchiladas (or tacos or burritos or quesadillas) are a perfect way to remake leftovers. Use one meat (or none or several), whatever veggies and beans available, cheese, sauce (doesn’t need to be enchilada sauce or even red sauce, there are green chile enchilada sauces, cream-based enchilada sauces, try it with what you have), and flour tortillas (I always keep these in the freezer), and there you have it, enchiladas!


Pork and pumpkin enchiladas

1 c juice drained from 28-oz can of peeled whole tomatoes
1 c pumpkin purée
1 t–1 T hot sauce, to your preferred SQ (spicy quotient)

4 c leftover cooked pork, diced
1 15-oz can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 c pumpkin purée
3 T roasted garlic
3 c shredded cheddar cheese, divided
2 c shredded lettuce
remainder of 28-oz can of whole tomatoes, squeezed and smashed
2 T hot sauce, to your desired SQ
12 flour tortillas

Spray a casserole dish with cooking spray. Preheat oven to 350°. Combine 1 cup juice drained from whole tomatoes, 1 cup pumpkin, and hot sauce in a shallow dish, set aside. In a large bowl, combine pork, beans, remaining pumpkin, garlic, 2 cup cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, and hot sauce, and mix well.

Dip both sides of one tortilla in the shallow dish of sauce, fill tortilla with about ½ cup pork mixture, roll tortilla, and place seam down in the casserole dish. Repeat with remaining tortillas until all pork filling is used. Top with remaining cup of cheese, distributing so that all tortillas are covered. Cover with foil that has been coated with cooking spray. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake 5 minutes more until cheese is bubbly, by not brown.

Transformations

What do you make with your ready-to-be-tossed bananas, besides banana bread (muffins) and smoothies? I’m ready for something new.

Also, any ideas for what I can make with leftover corn muffins? We had neighbors over for the Patriots game on Sunday, and I overbaked (surprise, surprise).

I forgot how yummy this was!

I made an Oven Roaster last night and was thinking of how to use the leftover chicken. This recipe came from a friend of Manny's!

Sweet Bride's Easy Spicy Mexican Chicken Soup

• 2-3 Cups cooked and cubed chicken (I roast chicken breasts, cool then cube)
• 4 cups chicken broth (you can make your own or use Imagine or Kitchen Basics chicken broth as they are both really good).
• 2 cans of Cream of Chicken Soup (like Campbell’s Healthy Choice with the lower sodium)
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 2 cans Rotel Mexican style tomatoes (these are spicy but really good cooked tomatoes). If you are worried about the heat, then use 1 can of the Rotel tomatoes and 1 can of fire-roasted tomatoes.
• 1- 4 oz. Can of diced green chilies
• 1 can of white corn, or you can cut the corn off of 2 ears, depending on the season.
• 1-1/2 tsp. ground cumin
• 1 onion, cut into bite size pieces
• 1 carrot, cut into bite size pieces
• 1-2 Tablespoons of olive oil
• Chopped Cilantro
• Kosher salt to taste
• Pepper to taste
• 1-2 avocados

Roast the chicken breasts in a 350° oven until almost done. Let the chicken cool. Strip off the skin and discard. Cube the chicken and set aside. You could also use a pre-cooked chicken but I like using the breast meat.

In a stockpot or Dutch oven, sauté the onions, carrot and cumin until the onions are almost clear. Add the chicken stock, wine, cream of chicken soup, corn, tomatoes and diced chilies. Simmer until the carrots are done. Add the chicken and some chopped cilantro. Bring back to a simmer and taste. Adjust seasonings and simmer from 30 minutes up to 2 hours.

To serve 4-6 people: Ladle the soup in a bowl and top with chopped avocado and chopped cilantro.

I make corn bread to go with this soup. If you want a heartier meal add a good salad.

Fannee Doolee loves to cook, but hates to shop. (Remember Fannee Doolee? The girl from Zoom on PBS when we were kids? She loved things with double letters, but hated things without.) Well, I'm with Fannee on this one, but I don't love to cook and hate to shop because of the double-letter-single-letter difference, I just love it and hate it. If only I could cook without going to the grocery store (I'm too frugal to use Peapod, but am liking that my eldest has his license & is still enamoured enough with the novelty of driving to be willing to run some errands for me. However he's not yet at the point where I can give him a full list).

So, now that the holiday is over, and I've cooked my big meal, but still want to entertain, preferably with a different meal, creativity kicked in. I had leftover creamed spinach, and a container of mushrooms that hadn't gotten used yet. Stuffed mushrooms! I just added some bread crumbs and cheese to the creamed spinach. Easy and yum!

Not looking for an appetizer idea? How about brunch? A spinach-and-cheese omelet or frittata would be perfect! Lunch? A baked potato topped with creamed spinach and cheese, with a salad on the side.

What ideas can you come up with from your leftovers?

What are your best leftover ideas for ham?

Fall flavors

In my last post, I extolled the benefits of the pressure cooker. Today it’s the crockpot. I’m reinventing the leftovers from last night’s intimate dinner party (roasted pork tenderloin with tomato-pear chutney and sweet and sour butternut squash) to be today’s game day repast for the boys (pulled pork). Nothing says “Fall” like pulled pork, yum. I just pulled out the crockpot out of the cabinet, threw in the little bit of leftover pork tenderloin (which I had roasted only with lemon pepper and garlic last night) and another pork tenderloin, because I’d bought the value pack of tenderloins on sale, along with the leftover chutney (about 2 cups), the leftover squash (about 1 cup), and a cup of my homemade BBQ sauce, put it on low and let it go. When the boys sit down to watch the UMass football game at 3:30, it’ll be falling apart and ready for some crusty bulkie rolls and pineapple-cole slaw. Bear in mind, that you don’t have to have the same leftovers to do what I have done. Whatever flavors you had together as your first meal will meld wonderfully into your new meal. Usually the key to pulled pork is some sweet (fruit or molasses or sugar) and some acid (vinegar), it’s also a good idea to add something spicy (jalapeños). In this case, the fruit from the chutney and the squash will just melt into nothing but flavor when the pork falls apart. You can also use a cheaper cut of pork, but I used what I had on hand because I had bought the value pack. Slow cooking is a great method for tenderizing less expensive cuts of meat, and the crockpot is the best for slow cooking on a day when you have a lot of things going on. As a final note, many of the meals you can cook and leave in the crockpot, you could also cook quickly, at the last minute, in the pressure cooker. Test out your favorites in various methods, or click on these links to try some of mine.

Tomato-Pear Chutney
The first time I made chutney of any kind it was tomato-pear chutney, from the pears from the tree in my yard about 10 years ago. The trees have since stopped producing usable fruit, but I was feeling nostalgic for the chutney.

2 ½ c plum tomatoes, coarsely chopped
2 ½ c pears, peeled and coarsely chopped
½ c raisins
½ c green pepper, diced
½ c onion, diced
1 c brown sugar
½ c white vinegar
1 t salt
1-inch piece fresh ginger
½ t dry mustard
⅛ t cayenne pepper
1 jalapeño, minced

Combine all ingredients in saucepan or crockpot. In saucepan, bring to a boil; boil gently, stirring frequently, until mixture is thickened and reduced about one-half in volume (about 45 minutes), stirring occasionally. In crockpot, simmer on low for 4 hours. Serve chilled or at room temperature. Can be packed in clean, hot jars, and sealed using the pressure cooker, or can be stored in the refrigerator for 2 weeks or in the freezer for 6 months.

Sweet and Sour Squash

3 T extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium butternut squash (about 2½ lbs), peeled, seeds removed, and cut into 1-inch cubes
3 cloves garlic, minced
salt and pepper, to taste
1/3 c balsamic vinegar

Preheat oven to 350°. Toss squash with garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper, and place in a single layer in a casserole dish. Bake for about 2o minutes, until squash is golden. Drizzle with balsamic vinegar before serving. Serve warm or at room temperature. Experiment with this dish with your other favorite vegetables. I’ve also done this on the stovetop, and with green beans and shallots or broccoli and golden raisins.

Ham Leftovers

What are you planning to do with your Easter Ham leftovers? I have sandwiches (grilled ham, cheese and tomato) planned, and Pasta Carbonara with ham and peas. I usually throwthe bone in the crockpot with some white beans, onion and garlic; but my hubby is on a limited diet these days, and beans are not included:( I welcome your suggestions and recipes!

At lunch yesterday, a woman said, “When I have a cup of coffee at someone else’s house, it always tastes better. When I even have a cup of tea at someone else’s house, it tastes better.” That confirms two of my “food beliefs” ­— food always tastes better when someone else has made it, and it always tastes better when it’s shared with someone else.

I’m always surprised by the number of people who say they can’t cook. I’ve eaten at a lot of tables, and I’ve never sat down to something inedible. When there’s good company, laughter, fun, and love, the food always tastes good.

It doesn’t need to be fancy or pretentious, in fact, it’s better if it’s simple and from the heart. Make brownies or a cake from a box, put on a pot of coffee or a kettle for tea, and invite a friend to sit with you. You’ll both enjoy the company and the food.

When I’m having a friend for tea, I make these scones. The recipe originally came from my cousin, Mary Fran. One of the nicest things about this recipe is its flexibility — it can be changed based on tastes, or what you have on hand. I adapted it to chocolate scones when my son was in 3^rd grade because he wanted “something chocolate” for his teacher, and I’ve made them with dried cranberries or dried blueberries or whatever I have. My neighbor Lynne has made it her own cinnamon scones recipe by substituting cinnamon chips (in the baking aisle, with the chocolate chips, but they’re hard to find, if you see them, buy two!) for the raisins. Today, I’m making them with cranberry relish I’d made for Thanksgiving, and it never got eaten, so it went into the freezer. Now that I’m baking for Christmas, I need freezer space — yet another repurposing of leftovers. Also, I'm feeling inspired, so I think the teachers are getting an assortment of scones with a pound of coffee as gifts this year.

Mary Fran’s scones
makes 12 large or 18 medium scones

2 c raisins, soaked in hot water for 10 minutes to plump them (or 2 c dried cranberries or dried blueberries or currants) (Don’t do what one of my sisters did, I won’t name names, and boil the raisins in the water, and leave them on, and ruin your best saucepan ...)
2 sticks butter
1 t salt
4 t baking powder
4 c flour
½ c sugar (or less)
2 eggs
1 c milk (I prefer buttermilk)

Preheat oven to 350°. Combine dry ingredients with butter into a coarse mixture. In a separate bowl, combine eggs and milk. Make an indentation in the dry ingredients and add the eggs and milk. Stir together with a fork to moisten. The less stirring the better, stirring makes for tougher scones. Add raisins and stir just until they’re combined. Bake at 350° for 30 minutes. Serve warm.

Will’s chocolate scones: Replace raisins with 2 c chocolate chips and add 3 T good-quality cocoa powder to the dry ingredients.

Lynne’s cinnamon scones: Replace raisins with 2 c cinnamon chips

Katie’s cranberry-orange scones: Replace raisins with 2 c cranberry-orange relish.

Second (or third or fourth) time around

Bridget asked:

What are you doing/did you do with the leftover turkey? I tried some different recipes, I'll post them later. Thanksgiving Strata for Brunch on Sunday, it was tasty, a good change. Turkey Enchiladas and of course Turkey Divan.

I just made the best—and one of the easiest & quickest!—leftover turkey meals I've ever made! I served it with white rice—to which I added leftover mashed butternut squash & a can of drained, rinsed black beans just before serving. It was adapted from www.cookinglight.com.

(BTW, I still have more turkey & a great stock (for this, I just put the carcass in my crockpot Thanksgiving night, fill with water & let it simmer for 12-24 hours), any ideas for a different soup or stew?)

Turkey Picadillo
Turkey matches well with the flavorful ingredients of this Cuban dish: tomato, chiles, cinnamon, and cumin. Serve with baked tortilla chips.

1 t olive oil
¼ c finely chopped onion
1 garlic clove, minced
1 c chopped tomato
2 T chopped jalapenos
1 T dark brown sugar
½ t ground cinnamon
½ t ground cumin
½ t black pepper
¼ t salt
2 T golden raisins
2 T capers
1 T red wine vinegar
1 T dry sherry
2 c chopped skinned cooked turkey
8 flour tortillas

Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onion and garlic; cook 2 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add chopped tomato and green chiles; cook 1 minute, stirring frequently. Stir in brown sugar, cinnamon, cumin, black pepper, and salt; cook 30 seconds, stirring constantly.

Reduce heat to low. Stir in raisins, capers, vinegar, and sherry; cook 3 minutes or until thoroughly heated, stirring often. Add turkey, stirring to combine. Remove from heat.

Warm tortillas wrapped in foil in oven. Spoon about 1/3 cup turkey mixture onto each tortilla; roll up.

Makes 4 servings.

We had a little dinner party here last night, just a few friends, a few tapas, and some nice wine. We ended the evening with a fabulous bottle of limoncello that my brother-in-law brought back from Positano for my birthday.

One of the best things about the party, was that it was followed by a do-nothing day. We’d had a busy week, and even a busy day leading up to the party last night. I hadn’t left myself enough time to do what I really wanted to do, but it was good friends, and nobody really cared about anything but hanging out and being together and relaxing a little. Everyone had had equally busy weeks.

But, back to our do-nothing day today: It was made even better by the fact that I had made tandoori chicken skewers and had enough leftover to add the chicken to salad tonight for our dinner so I didn’t really have to make dinner tonight.

It was so good, and so well received by the family, that I’ll plan it again in the future. The tandoori chicken is perfect for our Friday Night Appetizers-for-Dinner, and I’ll make enough extra for another Do-Nothing Sunday Dinner.

I adapted the tandoori chicken recipe from the Purcell sisters’ Tandoori lamb with cumin dipping sauce. I had chicken and I was looking for an interesting way to serve it, so I used this recipe.

Tandoori chicken with cumin dipping sauce

2 c plain yogurt
2 T ground coriander
2 T paprika
2 T fresh lemon juice
1½ T ground cumin
1½ T ground ginger
½ t turmeric
½ t ground cardamom
½ t salt
1 garlic clove, minced
2 lb chicken breast, cubed


¾ c sour cream
¾ c plain yogurt
1 T fresh lemon juice
1 t ground cumin
salt and pepper, to taste

Combine the first 10 ingredients in a bowl and blend thoroughly. Add the chicken, and toss to coat. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

When you’re ready to prepare the skewers, mix together sour cream, yogurt, lemon juice, and cumin. Salt and pepper to taste.

Preheat broiler. Place chicken onto 5-inch skewers on a broiler pan. Broil for about 3 minutes on each side. Remove to serving platter.

Tandoori chicken salad
For my salad today, I heated my chicken and added what salad ingredients I had in the fridge.

1 lb tandoori chicken skewers, leftover from Appetizers-for-Dinner
10 oz salad greens
1 pt grape tomatoes
1 cucumber, peeled, quartered, sliced
1 celery stalk, sliced
1 red bell pepper, diced
3-4 new red potatoes, boiled, chilled, quartered (these were leftover from Thursday’s mashed potatoes)
cumin dipping sauce, leftover from Appetizers-for-Dinner

Combine salad greens, tomatoes, cucumber, celery, and red pepper. Top with potatoes and chicken skewers.

You can dress with whatever salad dressing you like, but it was delicious with a batch of the cumin dipping sauce.

Leftovers by any other name …, continued

Anyone who knows me knows a few things about me:

1. I hate to throw anything out.


2. I love leftovers, but my family doesn’t, which brings me to ...


3. I try to disguise leftovers in every imaginable form, so my family does not recognize them as having been a previous meal — chicken pot pie, chicken soup, vegetable soup, stews of all shapes and sizes, cheesy vegetable enchiladas (really any Mexican is ideal for hiding the evidence of the previous meal).

Given all those givens, I encountered a surprising piece of information last week that made me ask: How did I miss that?!

I put on an interactive dinner party last week, and one of the dishes we made was Gazpacho. Fourteen women were cooking the meal together. When the duo that was making the gazpacho was chatting with me, one of them remarked, “We always had gazpacho growing up, my mother made it out of leftover salad.”

She what?! I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of that. (Even if you know me pretty well, you may not know that I love gazpacho, I seldom make it, because my own family balks at cold tomato and vegetable soup.) n my defense, maybe I never thought of it, because I was never really trying to get rid of leftover salad: I grew up in a family of eight, we never had leftover salad. Even in my own family, my kids love salad, and we seldom have any leftover.

I do remember being surprised when I first met my husband’s family and found out that his Lebanese side of the family even had a name for leftover salad (mixed with day-old Syrian (pita) bread): Fatoush.

So, turning leftover salad into an entirely different dish you could actually serve to people, I love it! I mentioned it to my friend, Eileen, who is a vegetarian, and a very good cook, she said she’d only use the tomatoes and cucumbers from the leftover salad, so I tried.

I used the Gazpacho recipe from a friend I used to work with.

Vivian's blender gazpacho

5 large tomatoes, ripe and firm, divided use
3 European cucumbers, long seedless, peeled, divided use
¼ c olive oil
½ bunch green onions
1 bunch parsley
1 bunch chives
3 garlic cloves
5 dashes red wine vinegar
1 lemon, juiced
2 dashes Worcestershire sauce
1⅔ c beef broth
black pepper, fresh ground
1⅔ c tomato juice
1-2 dashes Tabasco

Blend 2 tomatoes, 1 cucumber, oil, parsley, garlic, lemon, broth, tomato juice, onion, chives, vinegar, Worcestershire, and peppers in blender briefly and place in large bowl. Chop remaining tomato and cucumber coarsely and add to soup. Stir together and refrigerate overnight before serving.

To modify it, I went with Eileen’s suggestion and just used the tomatoes and the cukes, I used leftover tomato soup instead of the tomato juice, and I didn’t have any chives. I had slightly less parsley and green onions than the recipe called for, but I was very happy with the results, and I bet it will be even better tonight or tomorrow, and next time, I’ll try with more of the salad, just to see how it goes.

As a final note, another friend said she makes meatloaf when she cleans out her fridge. As with my gazpacho recipe, I’ve never entertained deviating from my few favorite meatloaf recipes, but in the interest of wastelessness, I may expand my horizons. Check back here for the results some time soon.

Leftovers by any other name …

During a large family dinner my sister-in-law announced, “My husband doesn’t like leftovers.” To which my mother responded, “Oh, I don’t believe that.” (Mom meant, my brother pretty much eats anything that doesn’t move and we always ate leftovers growing up.)

My brother sat in the middle of the two women looking sheepish. How else can you look when your mother & wife are disagreeing on your dining preferences over your dinner plate? In my mother’s defense, my brother was devouring Turkey Pot Pie, made with the leftover turkey and any and all fixings from the previous day's dinner, clearly leftovers. In my sister-in-law’s defense, we always ate leftovers growing up. My house was really like that joke about no one actually remembering the original meal. And when there was an original meal, it was already dry and overcooked, so you can imagine how much we all looked forward to those leftovers, even my brother who was fairly indiscriminate about his food.

Anyway, we took pity on my brother and hijacked the conversation to discuss how we each deal with leftovers in our own homes — truly a great strategy for getting a quick meal on the table. One of my sisters said her family actually looked forward to “Make Your Own Plate Night.” She puts out whatever’s in the fridge, and — this is the important part — her only rule is you must choose one protein and one vegetable, other than that, you can choose whatever you like. I do the same thing, but I call it “Leftover Night.” When I tested out “Make Your Own Plate Night” tonight, it was met with much better results. Go figure.

The other thing I try to do is make a new meal out of an old meal, thus the turkey pot pie that was being eaten during the conversation in question. It's easy and healthy and my family always eats it with gusto.

Turkey pot pie
Tender turkey with vegetables in a creamy sauce and a flaky crust—ultimate comfort food!

1 puff pastry sheet
6 T butter
6 T flour
½ t pepper
1 14½ oz can chicken broth
½ c milk
1 thyme sprig
salt and pepper to taste
4 c turkey, cooked and diced
2 c carrots*
1 10 oz. package frozen peas and onions*

Preheat oven to 425°.

Melt butter over medium heat. Add flour, stir until combined and cooked into a roux, about 5 minutes. Slowly add chicken broth and milk and continue stirring. (If you’re making it from a leftover turkey dinner, add any leftover gravy at this point too.)

Once all the milk and broth have been incorporated, add thyme sprig. Simmer until sauce has thickened. Place turkey and all veggies into 2-qt casserole dish. Season sauce with salt and pepper. Pour over turkey and veggies. Top with puff pastry. (Can be wrapped in foil and plastic at this point, and frozen to cook at a later date. To cook after freezing, defrost in the refrigerator the day before you plan to eat, and continue with baking.)

Bake at 425° for 30-35 minutes.

Cover with aluminum foil if crust starts to get too brown.

Serve with mashed potatoes and green salad.

*Whenever possible, I use leftover veggies of any kind. That’s what makes it a true pot pie. When prepare it for clients, I have to use fresh or frozen veggies because I have no leftovers.

Variations: Chicken Pot Pie: Use leftover roasted chicken from your own oven, or from your grocer’s rotisserrie.
Crustless Pot Pie: Rather than using puff pastry as a top crust, use mashed sweet potatoes. It’s a yummy, low-carb alternative.
Dairy-free: Omit the milk, and increase the chicken broth by ½ cup.